Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Modern Masters Musings

Been reading some of the "Modern Masters" series of late (which is where some of thes B&W images are coming from), and here are a few random thoughts I'd like to share with you:

-A couple of interesting common denominators come out when reading the bios of a lot of artists. For one, many of them seemed to move around a lot as kids (mostly due to being Army brats) and nearly all of them have a great love and affectation for Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard.-Also, quite a few of them like dinosaurs and space exploration, which is also very cool.-Man, reading the John Byrne interviews actually managed to make me like the man LESS. How is it possible for a guy to say that Golden and Silver Age creators don't have any creative rights because "That's how the system was back then and they knew it" and in the SAME INTERVIEW state that he feels he has to "protect" the creations of Jack Kirby? Doesn't that seem shockingly hypocritical or am I missing something?-All of these have great sketches and pin up gallery sections, and that's just awesome.

I really enjoyed reading these and learned a lot, so I can't recommend them enough.